Boston (Photo credit: Bahman Farzad)

Last night, for part of my supper, I peeled and ate a navel orange, which was sweet and good and convenient. I didn’t think much about it until later.

Late last night, I was watching BBC news, about the Boston marathon bombing. I’d heard earlier, on other news, that one suspect had been killed by police and another suspect had been injured. I haven’t read the news today. Even talking to someone can be so distracting. Jesus said He will keep in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Him.

After I turned off BBC news last night, after I heard the bombing suspects were from Russia, I thought of a book called “Inside Russia Today” by John Gunther. The book’s first copyright is 1957. The map inside is labeled “The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” The book belonged to my paternal grandmother, but I got permission from my parents to have the book, which I’m saving for my son, who likes old books, and history.

I saw on the cover of the book “Youth in Ferment” about some of the topics in the book. I started skimming through to a chapter called “Some Soviet Attitudes.”

The “Attitudes Toward the USA” sub-title, page 74 (hardback edition) explains that most Russians thought that only rich American males go to college, and that most of America is run by big business.

Here’s the last line of that paragraph, which stunned and saddened me: “I have heard a Russian boy ask quite seriously, ‘Are there mountains in America?’ and ‘Do you have oranges?’”

I put the book down. I couldn’t read anymore. I picked up another book called “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” by Alexander McCall Smith. I had marked the page with a gift bookmark (received in the mail) from the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The detective story is set in Botswana, Africa. The lady detective is learning her father’s story, through his voice. Her father had to leave his country to work somewhere else. On page 26, paperback edition, it says this: “You could never tell; there are many sadnesses in the hearts of men who are far away from their countries.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJVesYKuIms

A reproduction of the elephant clock in the Ibn Battuta Mall, Dubai. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I was browsing at Books-A-Million on one of the holidays, I found a book called “Incognito: “The Secret Lives of the Brain” by David Eagleman.

I read enough of the book to learn that even the financial meltdown of 2008 can be traced back to the human habit of taking instant gratification instead of waiting for delayed gratification. “Good things come to those who wait,” but we humans struggle so hard to wait, especially if we’re in some kind of pain.

Eagleman talks about all this, and the brain’s part in it. The author informs us that the idea to not suffer some ruins is to make a “Ulysses contract” with ourselves, for resisting temptation in advance. It’s a great and difficult battle, to resist temptation, but our brains can help us do this. It’s a mighty struggle, but our brains are capable of resisting temptation, Eagleman explains.

The German words for resisting temptation, he points out, are “innerer schweinehund” or “resisting the inner pigdog.”

Jesus said resistance to our inner pigdog leaves empty spaces, which we must learn to fill up with good things, which hopefully lead to good places and good practices and other people trying to do good things.

If we don’t fill our lonely emptiness with good, Jesus warns, worse things can happen, damaging our lives and the lives of others. So we must practice looking for the good things and practice doing good things and practice being with the people who are also trying to do good, like helping and disciplines and budgets and exercises and eating well and “first, do no harm” because we are all capable of being healers of humanity, in some little or big way.

We can help heal ourselves too, and God helps, if we ask. (And one step to healing ourselves must be to stop beating up on ourselves (it’s so hard!) for not knowing enough soon enough. “Be Sweet to Yourself,” like a McDonald’s cookie. It’s a good idea).

So, I signed up for more classes and also called the CSCC business office and planned a meeting, for planning something good. I’m here at the CSCC library again, hopefully about to check out what looks like a good book called “Faith Bass Darling’s Last Garage Sale” by Lynda Rutledge. The book flap says the book is about second chances and changes—and God.

At the top of the first page, there’s a fictional ad, about Faith Bass Darling’s garage sale. It says, “Louis IV Elephant Clock, signed by C. Balthazar.” Doesn’t that sound like a good story?

Isn’t it good, the way you can check out a good book at a good place, for nearly nothing, at a library? Libraries are such good news.

The holidays were really stressful and hurtful and lonely, mostly. I don’t have a printer at home and was afraid to write without one. It felt like trying to jump without a parachute, so I didn’t write.

But it’s good to be back. *Thank you* for waiting. 

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The grass harp / El arpa de hierba (Photo credit: Sofía)

When a writer makes me feel welcome and acceptable and a little bit wonderful despite it all, I almost cry.

The best I can do to thank and honor that magnificent storyteller is to tell other people, read this book.

So here I am telling you, asking you, pleading with you to read “The Grass Harp” by Truman Capote. The book was first published in 1951, but can probably be found at just about any local library. If you’re lucky, you might find a copy at a used book store for $2 even. The book is worth buying even if you find it new.

Do you remember pressing your pencil onto Kress paper? Or climbing up into a tree house or building a creek fort for summer days? Maybe remember the pink fuzzy blooms of a mimosa tree and the dark red pomegranates spilling out black seeds strange and bittersweet like many human relationships.

The late Truman Capote, born Truman Streckfus Persons, helps me remember and get through. I wish he could have been my friend. Capote has died, but he left us his very heart in his books and in his characters like Dollyheart and Catherine and Riley and Judge Cool.

When I consider certain passages, my heart stirs with the precious recognition that I’m not alone, that someone went before and knows what it’s like to feel different. And don’t many of us feel different, somehow defective, at one time or another?

Here’s Judge Cool explaining Spirits to Dolly and when I got done reading, I hoped it meant I was one of the Spirits instead of just plain difficult or crazy. “Spirits are accepters of life,” Judge Cool tells Dolly. “They grant its differences–and consequently are always in trouble.”

Trouble yourself, if you can even call it that, to read this long-ago book by Capote, who took his stepfather’s surname after his mother married a second time. When Capote asks you, through the voice of orphan Collin, “When was it that first I heard of the grass harp?,” I’m betting you will want to know the answer.

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